Nikodinov Saves Best Jump Until After the Competition

Angela Nikodinov knew she had skated well, but she couldn’t bear to watch the last few competitors in the Four Continents Figure Skating championships perform their long programs Saturday.

Nikodinov, 20, of San Pedro, began to pack her gear and leave the Delta Center, certain she would not be needed for the medal ceremony because she had been seventh after the short program.

“I thought maybe I’d be fifth and skate in the exhibition,” said Nikodinov, who was third at the U.S. championships. “I saw the monitor [with the standings] and I started looking kind of low and kept moving up. I saw I was second, and I couldn’t believe it.”

Nikodinov, the defending Four Continents champion, skated a lovely, balletic routine to “Sleeping Beauty” to make a rare five-place jump in the standings. Fumie Suguri of Japan won the long program with a nicely paced performance and won the women’s title, with compatriot Yoshie Onda third.

Tatiana Malinina of Uzbekistan, who led after the short program, slipped to fourth after a slow and labored program she blamed on the dry air. Jennifer Kirk of Newton, Mass., crammed seven triples into a technically difficult program but was snubbed by the judges and dropped a spot to fifth.

As a test event for the 2002 Winter Olympics, the Four Continents competition was generally a success, marred only by a temperamental scoreboard. The skaters lauded the quality of the ice, although Suguri disliked the seating configuration that put spectators high and far away. “It’s really hard for us to put our heart to the audience,” she said, “but this is a good experience for the next Olympics.”

As a test of the credibility of figure skating judging, though, the women’s final was puzzling.

Skating to “The Nutcracker,” Kirk executed the most challenging program of the final six skaters. She did a triple toe loop-triple toe loop combination and didn’t omit any planned elements. However, her technical marks were as low as 5.2 (out of 6.0) and peaked at 5.7. Three of her presentation scores were lower than her technical scores.

“She outskated everybody,” said her coach, Evy Scotvold. “But she’s 16, and the rest of them are in their 20s pretty much. They’re known. You know how this works. . . . She knows there’s a little bit of a pecking order. She knows you have to work your way around.”

Suguri knows the value of hard work. The daughter of an airline pilot, she learned to skate in Alaska while her father was stationed there. She returned to Japan at a young age and worked her way up to fourth in the world junior ranks in 1996 and 1997, but a back injury kept her out of the 1998 Nagano Olympics. She’s skating on damaged ligaments in both ankles but refuses to undergo surgery until after the Salt Lake City Games.

“My doctor said it would be six months to recover from the surgery, so we decided not to do that this season because it was a very important season in preparation for the Olympics,” said Suguri, who will represent Japan in next month’s World Championships at Vancouver, Canada. “Instead, we decided on training to make my ankles stronger. My ankles are getting better, but I still have to do taping.”

Nikodinov’s obstacles have been mental rather than physical. Usually capable of one good program but rarely able to maintain her focus and strength, she broke that pattern at the U.S. meet in Boston. Her shaky short program Thursday could have pushed her backward, but she faced her demons Saturday.

“It did get to me a little bit, but I said, ‘When I wake up, I have to start all over. I can’t let one performance mess up my free program,’ ” said Nikodinov, who credits her recent improvement to losing 15 pounds and working with choreographer-coach Elena Tcherkasskaia, a former Bolshoi ballerina. “I was thinking, ‘Oh, I did this many times. I did it in nationals.’

“I got ready three hours early in the hotel. I was ready to go out there and prove I didn’t go back to my old self. I’m really happy with coming back and proving myself.”

Those insecurities reappeared late in her four-minute routine, and she began to think too much instead of relying on instinct. She reduced a planned triple lutz to a single and did a double toe loop-double toe loop combination instead of a tougher triple-double, but her marks didn’t suffer because she already had done a triple lutz-double toe combination and three other clean triple jumps.

“I got a little tight,” she said. “In the beginning, the axel was the best I’ve done all week. The lutz, loop, flip and salchow, it was all timing. I just rushed the last two jumps. I need to remember how that felt and not let that happen again.”

Amber Corwin of Hermosa Beach, who was fifth at last month’s U.S. competition, moved up from ninth to seventh. A full-time student at Long Beach State, she had little time to prepare and was dissatisfied with her season-ending performance.

“I didn’t push things enough,” said Corwin, 22. “Going out, I told myself I needed to push, but I could feel myself holding back.

“It was draining, all the emotional stuff from nationals. I let myself have too much of a letdown. I’m really disappointed and I wish I could do it again.”